Poland: The Magen Avraham Gets Tombstone

A tombstone was placed, this week, over the tomb of 17th-century scholar, Rabbi Abraham Abele Halevi Gombiner in the Polish city of Kalisz. Rabbi Gombiner is known for his Magen Avraham commentary on the Orach Chayim section of Rabbi Yoseph Karo's legal work the Shulchan Aruch.

The event marked the culmination of a 20-year fight to return the Jewish cemetery to Jewish hands. Following the Holocaust World War II, when the city's Jewish population of about 25,000 was decimated, the cemetery was appropriated for a school yard and trees grew there, making the Magen Avraham's grave and those of other local Jews hard to find.